I Was Riley's Mom — Until the Day She Called Me "Handsome"

She opened a window for me, and it changed everything.

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By Casey Brown, as told to Nicole Blades

Dec 1, 2017

As parents, our main job is to teach our children lessons that help to guide them toward being good, kind people. Then there are those times when these little humans somehow flip the whole thing on us, and they end up teaching us grown-ups how to be our best, most authentic selves. For me, this revolutionary moment happened 2 1/2 years ago, when my kid Riley and I were getting dressed up for a blog post or something. I told her that she looked beautiful in the dress she had put on, and Riley looked at me in that way that kids can and you think, "Oh, man. Whatever this kid is about to say, I'm going to remember this forever."

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She said, "You're not pretty. You're handsome. It's different, you know?" And the thing is, it totally fit me! Handsome. Yeah, I was handsome.

Here's this 6-year-old who sees me better than I see myself. (Because these kids do, right? They can see you for real, for who you are.) She opened a window for me, and it changed everything.

My kid and me goofing off.

Casey Brown

It's easy to look back now and see that my truth — the fact that I've never felt like a boy or a girl — was staring me in the face all along. Still, it took me up until my mid-thirties to let that settle under my skin and be completely okay with being not this or that, but instead just being just me, in the middle.

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Growing up I was never a tomboy, and I didn't feel connected to being a "girl," even though you could usually find me busy playing with Barbie dolls and My Little Pony and doing cartwheels across the lawn throughout my entire childhood. I was just right there in the middle. But back in the '80s, there was no language for that, no simple ways to describe that kind of kid. By the time I got to high school, people started telling me that I was gay. Even my best friend kept saying it, like trying to convince me of it, and my parents were asking me, too. But I wasn't there yet. I was still in the middle.

I was never a tomboy but didn't connect to being a girl.

It wasn't until my sophomore year in college that I met a super-cute girl and came out as queer. I was engaged within a year. Gay marriage in Massachusetts passed a year later, and then I was married by 25. I had only dated three people before that, but here I was married to a woman and itching to start a family as soon as humanly possible.

BECOMING SOMEONE'S MOM

I had always wanted kids, and my then-wife and I decided from the beginning that I would be the one to carry. Being pregnant was probably the biggest turning point in my gender and the perception of myself as a woman. The truth was, I had worked my whole life to be a parent, but I could not deal with the dysphoria of being a pregnant body and conflating that with womanhood, an identity with which I had no connection. It was difficult and confusing for me. I felt like I was floating and not tethered to anything I could recognize. And when you're a pregnant person, the outside world views you differently; to them, you're fully a woman. It was really difficult for me. I didn't want anyone to touch me. I didn't want to show; I wore men's clothing that was five sizes too big. I just wanted to disappear.

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Then Riley was born, and being someone's mom was just the coolest thing ever. I nursed her until she was 15 months old. It felt like finally this body had a purpose. Being a mom helped me connect with my body in a way I hadn't ever been able to before. But I became a very different person, too. I felt pressured to put myself in standard gender roles. I figured I was a mom now so I should do mom things. So, I learned how to cook and clean and organize the whole house. I grew out my hair a little bit and even bought a women's jacket — just trying to build out the role because I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do or who I was supposed to be. At that point in my life, I had tried on masculinity and even some aspects of femininity, but continually felt like a gender failure. I didn't fit any of the molds. I just ended up feeling really lost — unsure where the real me was hiding beneath all of it.

Voting Day 2017!

Casey Brown

This lead me to overcompensate and micromanage every single moment of my life. I even started following stay-at-home-mom blogs that focused on topics like minimalism and homeschooling and tried to follow their lead as much as possible, thinking this would help me fit. It didn't. It probably made things worse, and more confusing for me. Soon my marriage broke up, for different reasons, but mainly because we weren't right for each other. But it brought on a needed shift in my POV. It was no longer a two-mom family; it was just my kid and me. I started to like taking out the trash and fixing doorknobs and things around the house just as much as baking bread and mopping the floor. There were no roles to fill or expectations to meet. For the first time I could just me: a person, a parent.

BECOMING RILEY'S APA

I met my girlfriend shortly after the "handsome" moment I had with Riley. My girlfriend is 12 years younger than me, and millenials have all sorts of language for this stuff. Right away she saw me for who I am, too. She helped me understand that there's a lot more to the gender conversation than boy-or-girl. She told me that there are lots of people who identify as neither.

Once I started to hear more about this non-binary gender space of in-between, of neither and sometimes even both, I felt like we all finally found some language for how I've always felt inside. I realized that it wasn't me that felt somehow outside of it all, it was my gender identity, because I truly was on the outside. Using they/them pronouns and neutral words like "parent" instead of "mom" and "partner" instead of "girlfriend" feel like I'm finally coming home. The only problem with that is the rest of our culture has a long way to go before they can really understand or embrace any of this. And to be honest, that part is far harder to negotiate than I imagined.

We finally found language for how I've always felt inside.

Riley has played a crucial role in helping me feel settled in my own skin. She saw me just as me. And I'm no longer obsessed with proving anything to anyone or needing to hide who I am. In fact, Riley was the one who decided that she didn't want to call me "mommy" anymore because it didn't work with my gender. We looked up parenting names in different languages and landed on Apa, which means "dad" in Hungarian; it sounded neutral to us.

A book Riley wrote for me, her 'Apa.'

Casey Brown

She's hurt when I'm misgendered. For example, one day over the summer, Riley's camp friends were yelling, "Riley, your mom is here!" when I arrived to pick her up. I could see her face fall as soon as she heard it. She later told me that she felt bad because she knew it hurt my feelings and that she was frustrated that people don't understand. Why is it so hard for grownups when it's so easy for me? I can't answer that for her. And I don't know how to make it better, for any of us.

As parents, we tell our kids to be themselves, whatever that looks like. We tell them to be brave, to stand up for themselves, and walk their own path proudly. It makes me feel good knowing that I'm setting that example for my kid to see. Despite the obstacles, I'm being my true self. Showing her that we are all so much more than our bodies.

Casey Brown lives in Boston and writes at lifewithRoozle.comabout parenting and life and all that good stuff in the middle.